to let exciting scandal prosper.  Moreover, the town’s bright anticipation of its concluding festivity on the domain of Calesford argued such tattle down to a baffled adorer’s malice.  The Countess of Cressett, having her cousin, the beautiful Mrs. Kirby-Levellier, in her house, has denied Lord Brailstone admission at her door, we can affirm.  He has written to her vehemently, has called a second time, has vowed publicly that Mrs. Levellier shall have her warning against Lord Fleetwood.  The madness of jealousy was exhibited.  Lady Arpington pronounced him in his conduct unworthy the name of gentleman.  And how foolish the scandal he circulates!  Lord Fleetwood’s one aim is to persuade his offended wife to take her place beside him.  He expresses regret everywhere, that the death of her uncle Lord Levellier withholds her presence from Calesford during her term of mourning; and that he has given his word for the fete on a particular day, before London runs quite dry.  His pledge of his word is notoriously inviolate.  The Countess of Cressett—­an extraordinary instance of a thrice married woman corrected in her addiction to play by her alliance with a rakish juvenile—­declares she performs the part of hostess at the request of the Countess of Fleetwood.  Perfectly convincing.  The more so (if you have the gossips’ keen scent of a deduction) since Lord Fleetwood and young Lord Cressett and the Jesuit Lord Feltre have been seen confabulating with very sacerdotal countenances indeed.  Three English noblemen! not counting eighty years for the whole three!  And dear Lady Cressett fears she may be called on to rescue her boy-husband from a worse enemy than the green tables, if Lady Fleetwood should unhappily prove unyielding, as it shames the gentle sex to imagine she will be.  In fact, we know through Mrs. Levellier, the meeting of reconciliation between the earl and the countess comes off at Lady Arpington’s, by her express arrangement, to-morrow:  ‘none too soon,’ the expectant world of London declared it.

The meeting came to pass three days before the great day at Calesford.  Carinthia and her lord were alone together.  This had been his burning wish at Croridge, where he could have poured his heart to her and might have moved the wife’s.  But she had formed her estimate of him there:  she had, in the comparison or clash of forces with him, grown to contemplate the young man of wealth and rank, who had once been impatient of an allusion to her father, and sought now to part her from her brother—­ stop her breathing of fresh air.  Sensationally, too, her ardour for the exercise of her inherited gifts attributed it to him that her father’s daughter had lived the mean existence in England, pursuing a husband, hounded by a mother’s terrors.  The influences environing her and pressing her to submission sharpened her perusal of the small object largely endowed by circumstances to demand it.  She stood calmly discoursing, with a tempered smile: